Alicia Goon 033: Encore

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Descriptions of blood and injuries

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Two more turns and then the whole ordeal would be over. 

"Left at the next intersection!" said Alicia, reaching up with her sore right hand to clutch the "oh heavens handle" above the door. Mr. Cattywampus clutched Alicia's thighs with all four sets of claws just as tight. In the driver's seat, Janice white-knuckled the steering wheel and hung a hard left with hardly any brake. "Okay, this next turn comes up sudde- left!" Alicia shrank in her seat inside the speedy silver coupe, hoping none of the neighbors happened to be looking out their windows. "Okay, it's this one here. You can just pull in betw- yep."

The car screeched to a halt, throwing Alicia forward hard enough to lock the seatbelt while her feline passenger hardly budged thanks to a death grip with four sets of razor-sharp claws. The other Kat I dealt with tonight may have hurt me worse, but at least she didn't expect me to feed her afterward.  

Deadpan stare. "This the place?" Janice asked

Alicia released the O.H. handle and unbuckled her seatbelt. "Wow, you really tore through the neighborhood." In a quieter voice, she continued, "I hope we didn't disturb the neighbors."

Janice rolled her eyes. "Yeah, sure would suck for someone take out their frustrations on you for no reason, huh?"

Alicia spoke softly, "I'm sorry Party Girl treats you like that."

"Are you trying to be my therapist?" Janice shot back in a voice precision-targeted at the humiliation gland. "You're a cat-sitter."

Alicia's cheeks burned like a furnace. "Um," she offered in her own defense. For a moment, Alicia pondered a way to ask for help that would irritate Janice the least. Right up there with the meaning of life. "Yeah. Uh, right. Can you help me bring all this stuff in, please? I'm already holding a cat," Alicia said, reaching for the door. She then clarified, "We're holding onto each other."

Talking to Janice felt like a staring contest. "Can? Debatable. And to answer your next question: no."

Frustration mixed with anger flashed across Alicia's face as she snapped back, "Janice, come on!"

Party Girl's favorite assistant glanced momentarily at the kitty supplies in the backseat before locking eyes again with her passenger. Alicia pushed the door open and got out of the car with only three sets of claws in her arms. Then came the gym bag, onto a shoulder--the wrong shoulder, she realized with a wince. She needed to get to the backseat. "I give up, how do you move this thing forward?" 

Janice and Alicia both noticed the fresh, dark red bloodstain about the size of a CD on the passenger seat. Unflinching deadpan stare, eyes of pure hate. 

After a harrowing pause, Janice answered, "Button under the seat." With a grunt, Alicia leaned down and found the button, causing her head to snap hard to the side as the passenger seat hit her like a dodgeball. "Watch your head," Janice warned seconds later. Alicia wouldn't give her the satisfaction of an angry glare.

Cat food and toys went into the gym bag. Small jug of kitty litter in the litter box, litter box under the right arm. Cat-sized sailor suit tucked under her chin. Alicia looked down at the automatic food and water dispenser in the back and felt defeated. "I'm just going to use bowls."

"Party Girl will be pissed, and not just at me," Janice warned. She seemed to relent with a roll of her eyes when she saw the broken look on Alicia's face. "Whatever. Do what you want."

"You drove in pretty fast. Think you can find your way out?" asked Alicia, less out of concern for Janice than a desire not to see her again.

"Duh. It's easy. Bye," said the assistant as Alicia closed the car door with her foot. She wondered if Janice ever got a headache from rolling her eyes so much. 

"Well good luck!" Alicia shouted back, and then cringed when a light turned on in a house down the street. "Sorry!" she whispered, then turned and stepped into her personal gopher hole. "Fizzbuzz!" hissed the temporary cat owner. Cat-borrower, perhaps. It hardly seemed fair Alicia should have to carry Mr. Cattywampus since she wasn't the one who could see in the dark.

There was the narrow tunnel in the thicket of branches she never got around to trimming. Definitely before spring comes, Alicia vowed and then immediately forgot. Her feline cargo seemed to perk up as they drew low to the ground and Alicia tried in vain to shrink her encumbered profile. A few steps in, she felt a tug on her right braid that pulled her head back, causing her to lose her chin-grip on the cat-sized sailor suit.

"Mr. Cattywampus!" Alicia reprimanded, but when she glared at her feline houseguest, all four paws were accounted for. Something else had caught on her hair.

Alicia nearly dropped her provisional cat as she released her grip on the litter box and cat litter under her arm. The loud clatter as the armful of pet supplies hit the ground earned her another four sets of nervous scratches. She reached up with her right hand to try and dislodge whatever it was when something pierced the tip of her finger. Reflexively, Alicia pulled her hand back, sucking air through her teeth, but something else seemed to catch on her sleeve. Whatever it was, she could feel it scratching her right triceps under her jersey.  Something was wrong. She paused and tried to back out when another one caught the left shoulder of her jersey. With a grunt of effort, Alicia tried yanking her right arm free of its snare, but the grip remained taut. 

"Please, please don't run away," whimpered the cat chaperone. "Please just let one thing go right. Please don't run away from me." 

She slowly lowered the chubby pink-orange Persian to the ground before inching her left hand toward the side pocket of her gym bag and unzipping it. The shivering, nervous feline perched on its haunches at Alicia's feet. Her trembling hand slipped into the side pocket before hesitating and instead reaching for the main zipper and opening up the sports duffel. She reached for the open five-pound bag of Purrfect Mewtrition and emptied the contents into her gym bag. Clicking her tongue, Alicia invited the eager feline in to warm up and chow down. Her hand went back to the side pocket and out came the pink mobile phone. She flipped it open and shined the screen at the branches around her.

Nothing looked out of the ordinary, but then something gleamed in the dim light. Not just one--at least a dozen shiny, thin, metal hooks hung with fishing line dangled from the branches of the foliage tunnel. Alicia didn't want to know how many more awaited deeper inside. 

She turned the phone back around so she could reach the keypad with her thumb and dialed the house. "Please be home and please pick up. Please be home and please pick up. Please be-"

"Hello?" 

"Robert!" Alicia cried, letting out a sigh of relief she didn't know she was holding. "Oh thank goodness. I need you to come to my side of the house. Bring some scissors or a knife or something that you can cut with. And a flashlight. Two flashlights, if you have them. Please hurry. Please. I promise this is an emergency."

There was a pause. "Yeah," came the reply, her housemate's growing concern palpable. She could hear Robert grabbing his keys. "Yeah, I'm coming. Are you okay?"

"I'll be okay if you get here fast," said Alicia, reassuring herself more so than Robert. "When you see me, do not come into the bushes. Do you understand?"

Robert's concern turned to worry as Alicia could hear him banging around looking for something. "Okay, I understand," replied Robert, hopefully not too distracted. "I have to go to the kitchen to find something, but I promise I will be there as soon as I can."

Alicia's teeth chattered as she knelt in the freezing cold, and she could see her breath in front of her. She had expected the unseasonably mild weather of midday to carry into the evening; it very much hadn't. Her calves began to ache from maintaining a hunched-over position, and she shivered the cold burrowed into her.

"Alicia! Alicia! I'm coming!" Robert's voice grew louder as he got closer. The neighbors could go take a flying leap if they didn't like it. Those panicked shouts sounded sweeter than music. Keven Se7en, eat your heart out. Pounding footsteps slowed to a stop behind her. "Are you okay?"

"Shine the flashlight in here. Point it above me at the branches, okay?" she instructed.

The brilliant beam illuminated nearly the entire tunnel. Alicia had been right: she didn't want to know how many more fishhooks were back there. Way more than a dozen. At least 50--probably more--swayed in unison in the occasional breeze.

"Holy shit," whispered Robert.

Alicia wanted to nod. She was nodding on the inside.

"I'm stuck. I've got three hooked to me that I can feel. Be really, really careful." She heard Robert shuffle into the bushes behind her. "Just so you know, I have a cat with me." 

The shuffling stopped. "What?" 

"Nothing. Sorry. Just-" Alicia felt the tension pulling on her hair give way and the tickle of loose fishing line on the back of her neck. "Thank you." 

The line snagged on her left shoulder fell loose as Robert forced a chuckle. "What are friends for?" he said, cutting Alicia's right arm free of the line. "Careful. Those hooks are still on you. I just got you free from the branches."

Alicia breathed a sigh of relief as her housemate reached an arm around her left side and handed her a red flashlight the size of a thermos. 

"Okay," said Robert. "Now what?"

"Remember that cat I mentioned? I need you to be so gentle, but can you take the gym bag from me? The cat's in there. I'll explain when we get to the kitchen."

There was a pause before Robert spoke up. "You aren't bringing your work home with you, are you?"

Alicia's eyes went wide. She gave herself a second to regain her composure. "Why?" Alicia asked, looking over her shoulder. She didn't want to lie to Robert, but she didn't want to tell the truth if she didn't have to.

The scruffy, unshorn hero held up his right index finger wrapped in a bandage. "You'll never guess what I found in our mailbox."

The truth it was, then.

"Let's get in out of the cold," said Alicia, shrugging off the gym bag and placing it delicately on the freezing sidewalk. 

Alicia reached into the gym bag to retrieve her keys and shoved them into the right pocket of her torn jeans. She lowered herself to her belly, groaning as all her bruises, cuts, and aches reawoke in the effort. She gripped the thermos-flashlight in her left hand, placed the cat litter jug inside the litter box, and pulled herself forward with her legs and elbows in a military crawl while pushing the litter box in front of her.

Robert called behind her, confused, "What are you doing?"

Alicia hollered back, just as confused, "I've got to unlock the door. I can't get in from your side."

There was a pause. "You lock your side's kitchen door?" asked Robert.

There was a similar pause. "You don't?"

Robert tried to dispel any tension, "We're different people. It's whatever." Alicia could hear the shuffle of footsteps approaching the bag and the sound of nylon being lifted by a shoulder strap. "Be safe. No telling what else you might find on the way in," he warned.

The warning made Alicia's stomach feel sicker. She tried to ignore how much she hurt and the creeping nervous nausea and kept crawling forward. In the fractured concrete path, about four feet ahead, she could see two fishhooks glinting in the light. 

"Ouch!" Nope. There were three. 

Alicia sucked air through her teeth again as she slowly lifted her right arm and saw the tip of the hook lodged in her forearm just enough for the second barb to sink its hook in. She wasn't going to risk letting it dig in any deeper. Blinding, piercing pain radiated from the new wound. It felt like the barb was rubbing against a raw, exposed nerve.

Breathe in, breathe out. Alicia set down the flashlight in front of her, pointing it at her arm. Breathe in, breathe out. She eyed the problem, looking for the best way to extract it. Breathe in, breathe out. There was probably a best way, but she had never gone fishing before. Same direction out as in, she supposed. Alicia secured a firm grip on the hook close to the skin. She wanted to get it out in one try. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in-

"AAAAAAAAA!!" cried Alicia as more of her blood poured from yet another open wound. That probably lit up a few more neighbors' windows. She flicked the hook away into the foliage and instantly regretting making it some poor animal's problem. "Frumpy dresses!" Alicia courteous-cussed. 

Three blood tastings in the same day was already at least one too many, even if one of the tasters was her. If any animal was going to sample the sidewalk runoff, Alicia hoped they would wait until after midnight out of respect. She brought her runny forearm to her mouth, trying to somehow drink out the pain. She shuffled forward a bit more, plucked the other hooks off the ground, and carefully bundled the two together between her thumb and forefinger. The end of the tunnel was only about three feet ahead. Two feet. One. 

Alicia descended the stairs one careful step at a time. She didn't see any hooks dangling from the door sill, even though it seemed like an obvious place to hang some. Something for the suggestion box. At the bottom of the six ill-lit steps, Alicia fumbled her house key into her hand and let herself in. Jenetti caught a picture-perfect pass as the stalking victim groaned and grunted her way up the stairs and through the door to the kitchen. She already heard Robert trying to negotiate with their - her - guest from the top of the stairs.

"Hey. Hey! Off the counter!" begged an already exasperated Robert. "Alicia, can you please?"

"It's because you put the bag with the food in it on the countertop," she explained as she slung the strap over one shoulder and cradled the purring feline to her chest as she walked towards the door on her side of the kitchen. "I had a cat growing up. You just have to know how they thin- ow! Little meanie!" she cried as Mr. Cattywampus bit her hand, causing Alicia to drop the cat to the ground. She tossed the bag out the kitchen door and shut it as Mr. Cattywampus chased after. "Sorry."

"Cute cat," said her rescuer. "I think I can guess who it belongs to. What's her name?" 

"Mr. Cattywampus," said Alicia and paused for a beat. "Her?"

Robert exploded into a fit of laughter. "Wow. So Giselle just- wow. Wow wow wow."

"I think Party Girl just liked the name and didn't care who she gave it to," Alicia explained.

Robert looked like he was was about to say something when his eyebrows hit the ceiling as he realized Alicia had less of her mouth than usual. "Whoa! What happened to your tooth?" Alicia stared at him. "Wrestling match. Got it."

On the dining room card table lay a paper towel with more than a dozen discarded fishhooks. Alicia added the two in her hand along with fishhooks from her tightly pulled-back hair, sleeve, and shoulder to the collection. 

For the first time since they met, Robert didn't take it upon himself to lighten the mood. "So, yeah. Wanna fill me in?"

Alicia took a deep breath. No way would he believe the entire tale. "The short version is that I made enemies with a violent, insane, catwalk-dwelling stalker who uses fishhooks as a calling card. I saw a strange car follow us when Party Girl brought me home that night. I think she followed us here."

Her housemate chuckled to himself. "That succinct explanation simultaneously made a lot of sense and is maybe the most insane thing I've ever heard." Robert paused for a moment and furrowed his eyebrows, seeming to recall something. "You accused me of setting Ralph loose in the house!"

She snapped back in her own defense, "I didn't accuse!"

"Your eyes did accuse," he retorted. "And then this followed you home? Alicia, I supported you, but do not rope me into this. I did not ask to be involved," pleaded Robert. "I'm not tough like you. Please. I don't want any part of this."

Alicia's gaze sank to the linoleum. "I'm sorry I couldn't keep my wrestling life and my real life separate."

"They're the same thing. There's just you, and there's only real life. There are consequences to your decisions. It's not fair to for me to have to face your consequences with you." Robert paused and looked conflicted whether he should continue. "I'm going to look for another place to live. We can still be friends, but I don't feel safe living with you anymore if it means things like this can happen," he said with genuine sadness in his voice. "We had a good thing."

Robert's words hit Alicia like a Gut Check. She hadn't expected civilian casualties. "I understand. Robert, I'm so sorry. And I know it won't change your mind, but I want to take care of this right now," said Alicia, gesturing at the paper towel covered in shiny fishhooks. 

"How?" asked Robert.

Alicia buried her face in one impressive hand. "... Can I ask something really selfish?"

"Please do."

"Can you drive me back to the Plunj?" asked Alicia, now the one pleading. "I know it's a long drive, but it's a special event tonight. We can make it if we hurry."

With a hesitant nod and tone in his voice, Robert replied, "Yeah."

"Thank you," said Alicia with a guilty look. "Sorry." She grabbed the bottle of liquid dish soap from beside the kitchen sink and opened the door to her side of the house. "Give me like 10 minutes. I need to go get a few things together. Can you grab a garbage bag to throw over the passenger seat-back? You’ll understand why when I walk away."

Behind a mop of shaggy hair, Robert cocked an eyebrow. "You're not planning on fighting her tonight, are you?"

Alicia's expression turned severe. "Trust me, it won't be a fight."